The Aftermath

[llcoolvad]

The grand total was 96 books destroyed. I am a little relieved, a lot cranky. I was as lucky as I could have hoped — of the 11 boxes that were soaked, one was filled with PC Magazine back issues, one was my dishes, one was stuff from grad school, and the rest were books.

The list:



Fiction: 39
Non-Fiction: 47
Anthology: 10

There was some serious crap in there (and even some high school textbooks like I hoped), but a few things that I will sorely miss. I'll have to figure out what I want to replace soon. For now I'm just happy that I've finished all the grunt work. I have to look at my insurance policy now and see how to file a claim. I got the guy at the unit to give me a free month's rent, and I also got him to give the new unit (10x20) for the same price as the old (10x12) — a $77 per month discount.

Things I learned: Always have renter's insurance. And never put books in boxes vertically — they act like sponges and ruin all the ones horizontally around them if they get wet. I almost never do that, figuring that it might ruin the spine, but sometimes you have weird space leftover and it's hard to resist.

Comments

[p-j-cleary.livejournal.com]

That's bad, but thank god you didn't wait until today to get into your unit, or the manager didn't dawdle on getting you another unit. If that water continued to flow (and you know it did...that bucket filled up FAST!), you would have lost rows of boxes of books, and I think other things would have been unsalvagable.

[llcoolvad.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. It was definitely excellent timing! And thanks again!!

[sarcasticah.livejournal.com]

Hell, yeah, what Patrick said! I was horrified by the damage, but it could have been so much worse.

I'm glad we could salvage what we could. If you need more help, call me!

[llcoolvad.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Hopefully I am safe for a while...

Think Twice About Using Insurance

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Warning: You may not want to actually use your renter's insurance. You've lost over one hundred books. Many of these are classics and are thus easy to find (and easy to find used and thus cheap). Calculate how much replacing what you want to replace will actually cost. Even if this is much more than your deductable, the insurance company is likely to make all that back and more by raising your rates when you renew.

After I used my insurance to pay for some minor damage when lightning struck a tree, and then paid crazy rates for three years, I vowed never to use it again unless it was to basically avoid bankruptcy. I also now have the biggest deductables possible, which means lower rates, which means I can save more money for these kinds of emergencies.

Sorry to give you this annoying advice. I think your plan of getting as much as you can from the storage company is a much better strategy.

Re: Think Twice About Using Insurance

[llcoolvad.livejournal.com]

That's a good point, thanks! I have insurance that I signed up for through the storage unit place, so I don't know if that will affect my rates or not (it's a flat fee based on the amount of coverage you get). I will ask!

It's really not that I need the money from them (I probably won't replace the books right now while I'm still in storage), it's more that I want SOMEONE to pay! :-)

Re: Think Twice About Using Insurance

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Oh, storage unit renter's insurance, not apartment renter's insurance. Well, that sounds good!

Re: Think Twice About Using Insurance

[llcoolvad.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I called them and they told me it doesn't work like regular insurance, and that my rate would only go up if they decided everyone's rate was going to go up -- so instead of $8 per month, they might decide $9 worked better for them. Anyway, I started the claims process. Wow, time consuming!

Re: Think Twice About Using Insurance

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Bummer about the time-consuming part. But otherwise, score!